Any writer on Colorado Springs is embarrassed by the fact that the great founder and benefactor of the city has requested that his name is not to be recorded in connection with his great and constant gifts to the municipality; and while it is far from the desire of any one to disregard the expressed wish of a man whose modesty is as great as is his munificent generosity, it is yet impossible to tell the story of Colorado Springs without perpetual references to her distinguished citizen, her great and noble benefactor and founder. It is not too much to say that there is probably not, in the history of the United States, all instance parallel to the story of General Palmer and Colorado Springs. Yet beyond this bare mention, in which one even thus records that which General Palmer has wished to have had left without reference, one is under bonds not to go. The Recording Angel may not be so plastic to the expressed preferences of the wise founder and the munificent benefactor of the charming city; and the vast and generous gifts, the noble character of the citizen whose life and example is the most priceless legacy that he could bequeath to Colorado Springs, however priceless are his long series of gifts,—these are inevitably inscribed in that eternal record not made with hands, on whose pages must ever remain, in shining letters, the honored name of General William J. Palmer, whose energy and whose lofty spirit have invested this beautiful centre of the picturesque region of Pike's Peak with the spell of an enchanted city lying fair in a Land of Enchantment.
CHAPTER IV
SUMMER WANDERINGS IN COLORADO
"God only knows how Saadi dined;
Roses he ate and drank the wind."
Emerson
Deep in the heart of the Rocky Mountains lies Glenwood Springs, a fashionable watering place, where a great hotel, bearing the name of the Centennial State, with every pretty decorative device imaginable, allures the summer idlers, and where various kinds of springs and baths furnish excuse for occupation. All varieties of invalidism, real or fancied, meet their appropriate cure. One lady declared that the especial elixir of life was found in a hot cave that yawns its cavernous and mysterious depths in an adjacent mountain. Another continued to thrive on (or in) the sparkling waters of "the pool," which is, for the most part, a dream of fair women, relay after relay, all day and evening, swimming about after the fashion of the Rhine sisters; and those who do not take kindly to the pool or the dark and "hot" cave fall upon some particular geyser and appropriate it for their own. Woe to the woman who interferes with another woman's geyser! The whole region around Glenwood Springs is phenomenal. A hot sulphur spring boils up at the rate of twenty thousand gallons a minute. The "pool"—where the Rhine maidens are forever floating, morning, noon, and night—covers over an acre, and is from three to six or seven feet deep. Two currents of water are constantly pouring into it,—the hot (at one hundred and twenty-seven degrees) at a rate of ten thousand gallons a minute, and the cold from a mountain stream. A stream constantly runs from it, a part of which is utilized as a waterfall in the centre of the large dining-room of the hotel. On one bank of this pool is a colossal stone bathhouse (costing over one hundred thousand dollars), where every conceivable variety of the bath is administered, and from which "the pool" is entered. In warm evenings, when the full midsummer moon peeps over the mountains, the groups of girls, one after another, begin mysteriously to disappear, and in reply to a question as to the destination of this evening pilgrimage one bewitching creature in floating blue organdie, as she flitted past, laughingly answered, "Come to the pool and see." There was no time to be lost. The moon in silver splendor was climbing over the mountains, and the girls emerged from their dainty evening gowns to array themselves in bathing suits. A few minutes later they were to be seen at this mysterious trysting place at "the pool," the only difference being that some were outside and some inside. Surely those inside had the best of it. How can the scene be pictured? From the broad piazza of the hotel a terraced walk ran down through the greenest of lawns, with shade trees and a fountain resplendent in colored electric lights. The pool lies in an open glade. Not far away is one of the ranges of the Rocky Mountains, over which the August moon was climbing. Tall electric lights mingled with the moonlight, giving the most curious effects of chiaroscuro through the glade and the defiles of the mountains. On one side of this immense natatorium rose the vast stone bathhouse,—a beautiful piece of architecture. Near by the round sulphur spring boiled and bubbled in a way to suggest the witches' rhyme:
"Double, double toil and trouble;